


Ash is ten.

by electriczero



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Immortality, and possibly Mewtwo's fault as well, i did not intend for vague angst but here we are, this is all Mew's fault somehow, this is completely unedited & written at 3am to boot i'm only kind of sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 16:36:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10666581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electriczero/pseuds/electriczero
Summary: Ash is ten. Ash is twenty.Even he’s not sure which one is right anymore.





	Ash is ten.

Ash is ten when he gets his first Pokémon. His birthday was the week before, and for months he’d been counting down the days. (to his first Pokémon, not his birthday. He has his priorities.) He’s ten when he goes on a journey to get all eight gym badges, and he’s ten when he does so.

He’s three weeks shy of eleven when he gets a strange invitation to an island to challenge the strongest Pokémon master ever. By his own memory, nobody ever gets to the island—a huge storm cancels all the ferries, and everyone stays at the Pokémon Center until it subsides. Years later he still has this odd feeling that something wasn’t quite right; he lost a few hours of time, the storm had no explanation, he has flashes of memories that never happened that vanish as quickly as they come. But he never questions his own memory of this day, and never knows of his death trying to stop two powerful Pokémon from fighting, nor his revival.

Ash is eleven when he travels the Orange Islands. He’s not quite twelve when he goes to Johto, and his mother comments that he needs to be extra sure this time to get enough nutrition on the road—he’s not growing nearly as fast as he had last year. In fact, it’s been a few months since he grew at all. Maybe it’s a pause before a growth spurt.

His mother worries when he gets back from Johto, too. He’s almost thirteen and hasn’t grown any taller in two years. Was it a medical problem? Was he undernourished from travelling so much?

There’s no explanation, and he’s fine otherwise, so he reassures his mother repeatedly that he’s _fine_. He’s just short for his age. Wasn’t she the one that said puberty could come very late for some boys, as late as sixteen? He’s only thirteen, he’s got a few years yet.

Ash boards the boat to Hoenn the day after his thirteenth birthday. After Hoenn and the Battle Frontier, he is two months past fourteen—and he still looks ten. He doesn’t look a day past it, despite the fact Gary is a whole foot taller than he was when both of them began their journey and Gary was a full month _younger_ than Ash.

Ash’s mother worries. Ash insists it’s nothing, completely harmless. Fourteen is still young enough it’s just late growth spurts.

He goes to Sinnoh at fourteen, returning just over a year later. He still looks ten.

It’s during Sinnoh that it gets awkward. Nobody believes him when he says his fifteenth birthday is in a few weeks—does he mean eleventh or twelfth? Nobody except Brock, who’s known Ash since he really _was_ only ten. Brock was only thirteen then. Now he’s seventeen, almost eighteen.

Neither bring it up, but it’s there unsaid. After Sinnoh, Brock goes off to college to be a Pokémon doctor, leaving Ash to go to Unova with no one but Pikachu to know that he’s supposed to be fifteen and a half.

He doesn’t even correct people anymore when they guess his age. It’s so much easier to agree with the mistake than to explain that he turned _sixteen_ last month, he’s not a little kid. Yes, of course he’s only ten, and must’ve just started his journey, being so young. Never mind that he’s got five regions’ gym badges and Pikachu is more powerful than any beginner or even intermediate trainer’s Pokémon could possibly be. It just leads to awkward questions, and people underestimate ten-year-olds in a battle, not expecting six years of battle experience (even if he’s still horrible at typical strategies).

It stings every time Iris calls him a little kid. She’s four years younger than him at the least, but he’s only ten, right? It’s even weirder to think of Cilan as the ‘grown-up’ of the group when he’s younger than Ash, too. But he’s only ten, right?

Ash is seventeen and a half when he gets to Kalos. Serena doesn’t say anything when they first meet, but as soon as the two are away from Bonnie and Clemont she confronts him.

At that summer camp, Serena had been six, and Ash had been eight. Serena is fifteen. Ash is ten.

With no answers, the two leave it unsaid. He’s just very babyfaced and naturally short. If pressed they’d admit his age, but does it hurt to just _let_ everyone else think that he’s only thirteen or so, to have met Serena at camp?

Ash returns to Pallet Town from Kalos exactly six days before his nineteenth birthday. He’s still ten.

Delia has long gone from concern and panic into acceptance, with dozens of rationalizations behind his lack of aging. Professor Oak never says anything about it, and everyone else in town just whispers behind Delia’s back about the curse that must be afflicting her son.

The vacation to Alola is more than just the start of a new Pokémon adventure, it’s an excuse to not go back to Pallet and see the friends he’d had in elementary school leave as adults, while he’s still ten. His own mother backs up his lie of being ten (“almost eleven” he claims) when she sends him off in Alola, because it’s easier than the truth.

It would be funny if it weren’t so painfully real. The day Tapu Koko gives Ash the Z-Ring is also Ash’s twentieth birthday.

Lillie asks how old he is when he mentions that fact a week later, and he hesitates.

Ash is ten.

Ash is twenty.

He knows which one he says, but he doesn’t know which one is true anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> when i was ten my brother and i came up with the "explanation" behind why Ash is ten forever in the anime: when he came back to life in the Mewtwo movie, the miracle tears plus Mew's influence meant he now /never/ ages.
> 
> years later i still like that theory enough to make me post my first fanfiction since i was ten (which was, oddly, also a pokeani fanfic)
> 
> serena's age isn't canon set and im so glad for that


End file.
